@Mujinaclass こんにちは。(ほかの方にも会話に加わってもらえたらと思いこちらに書きます。)突然ですが、下の論文は知っていますか? Jonas & Kording (2017). Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor? この論文が神経科学者にどのように受け止められたか、気になっています。
I know these tweets make people depressed or annoyed or both. But I could not resist expressing my emotions on this issue. And I'm tweeting in English in order not to depress or annoy too many of my followers.
One of the professors who I respect the most told me a few days ago; there seems to be zero people in charge of this country (whether in corporations or in the government) who cares more then securing the status quo for 5 another years. It's true.
I just cannot believe how indifferent we Japanese are to the hideous immigration policy about to be passed. How can we stand a life barely made possible by people working in slavish environment away from home?
昨日の森田さんの文章から連想して考えたこと。記事でも引用されているHarariは、最近「21世紀の人間が一番苦しむのは"irrelevance"(=必要とされていない感?)だ」ということを言っている。だとすると、大人が子どもに与えるべきはsense of relevanceであってそれに尽きるのかもしれない。
All this is made possible by the decades of relationships between the author and the interviewees. I also found the author's critical yet sympathetic attitude toward the scientists a rare one. This is kind of a science journalism I have always wanted to read.(5/6)
These are world famous scientists and philosophers. We usually view them (in TED talks and in reading their books) as inhumanly intelligent and energetic people. Yet depicted in this book are their weaknesses and how those affect their intellectual stances.(4/6)
They dig deep into the personal experiences, many of which are damaging ones, like divorcing due to one's own affairs or losing a child in an accident. The author tries to connect these personal stories to the theories these thinkers hold on the mind-body problem. (3/6)
The author interviews 9 prominent thinkers on the "mind-body problem", i.e, the problem of whether science can explain consciousness, free will and the self. But these are not ordinary interviews. (2/6)
I'm half way through the book "Mind-Body Problems: Science, Subjectivity & Who We Really Are" by the science journalist John Horgan. It's released free on a website ($5 on kindle). The new attempt of self-publishing caught my attention, but the book itself is extraordinary. (1/6)
We don't feel that now, with all sorts of academic books (written in Japanese) filling the shelves of bookshops. But this publishing culture is not sustainable with only 50M Japanese speakers instead of the current 100M. We need a different model.
Japan's population shown as a spike, in the time span of a millennia. I don't get upset about the declining number of Japanese people per se; what worries me is the diminishing of Japanese 'speakers'. We may be on the verge of losing the language, especially its academic use. https://x.com/yuji_ikegaya/status/1034641075623739392
I personally know some assistant/associate professors who joined "AI startup"s. This is exciting. But whether this trend leaves enough brains to tackle longstanding scientific questions is what worries me. Hope they don't lose academic passion even working in business sectors. https://x.com/rmaruy/status/1017399212206534657
These days I get the impression that bright young physicists and mathematicians all too readily turn into machine learning experts or datascientists. Sure, it is an important field, but does it deserve attracting this much academic talent?